“Not against the husbands.” Nester tugged a sheet from the bottom and handed it over. “More recently, she made several local police reports about being harassed or stalked, but she didn’t have any idea who was doing it. Everything from somebody slashing her tires to cutting her electricity to possibly breaking into her home. All of the reports are in the stack.”
“Do the reports mention any flowers left for her?”
“Yeah. Black dahlias left on her balcony. The interesting part is that she lives on the fourth floor, so either the stalker went through her condo to get to the balcony or somehow climbed up from the ground. We need to take a look at the place.” Nester straightened the remaining papers.
Interesting. Laurel craned her neck. “Walter?” “Yeah?” he bellowed back from his office.
“Did you speak with Sheriff York and give him the identification of the victim?”
“Sure did.”
Good. “Did he mention that our victim had filed complaints about a possible stalker?”
Walter huffed as he crossed into the doorway. “Nope. Didn’t say a thing about that and if there are any, apparently he didn’t look for me. I even asked if he’d met her, and he said that he had not.”
“It’s possible he hasn’t,” Laurel said, glancing at the reports for an officer’s name. “Officer Frank Zello. On all three reports. We’ll need to speak with him.” She looked at her computer. “Walter, please deliver these and get a judge to sign off on the search warrants for Dr. Rox’s home and office, and then let’s finish work for the day. We’ll convene first thing tomorrow.” They both left her office.
She lifted her phone to her ear and dialed Huck. “Rivers,” he answered. It was quiet in the background.
“Hi, Huck. I should have signed search warrants for our victim’s home and office by tomorrow morning. I’ll ask the FBI Seattle field office to search her office, but do you want to meet and go through her place after the crime scene techs finish?”
Aeneas barked once in the background. “Sure. I’ll call the state team and tell them to be ready early. Also, another storm is moving in right now. I’ll follow you along Birch Tree Road until my turnoff. The road to your farm gets better after that, anyway.”
Her chest warmed. “I don’t need backup, Huck.”
“Meet you outside in fifteen minutes. That’s what friends do.” He clicked off.
It was?
Chapter Seven
After a night during which Aeneas barked erratically at invisible ghosts outside, Huck kept his hands easy on the wheel as morning brought more lightly drifting snow. Laurel sat quietly in his passenger side seat as they drove away from their office building, her gaze out the window, her eyes shadowed.
She secured the back of one gold earring. “The Seattle team didn’t find anything interesting in a search of Dr. Rox’s office outside of Seattle. She was a solo practitioner in a small house turned commercial venture, and one of her colleagues had already picked up the patient records pursuant to state law.”
Huck sighed. “Damn, I’d love to get my hands on those patient records.”
Laurel nodded. “As would I, but HIPAA laws prevent that. The colleague will make the necessary notifications to patients and then follow the law as to storage. There’s no way for us to see those, unfortunately.”
She sighed. “Nester is continuing his investigation into her life but hasn’t found any safety deposit boxes or anything else of interest.”
Huck nodded. “I’ll have someone from my team reach out to her colleagues. Maybe they know why she was hiding in the woods. We’ll find out who to call when we get the phone dump.” He glanced her way. “You okay?” he asked.
She started and turned toward him. “Yes.”
Okay. He was learning that she was as literal as a street sign. “Let me rephrase. You have shadows beneath your eyes and look like you didn’t sleep well last night. Did you have difficulty sleeping?” One of Laurel’s good characteristics, and she seemed to have many, was that she wouldn’t find any hidden meanings in his question. Many a woman would be insulted that he mentioned she looked tired. She’d take him at his word.
“Yes.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “I had nightmares last night, which I suffer from sometimes.”
Not for the first time, he wondered who comforted her. He’d met her mother, who was fiercely defensive of her daughter. But there were some serious demons in that woman’s eyes. “We’re friends, right?”
“Yes.” Laurel tilted her head in that way she had as if she were trying to decipher some sort of code or language she didn’t understand. “Why do you ask?”
“Because friends talk to each other.” He was the last person in the entire world who should be giving advice or trying to connect, but she drew him in a way even he couldn’t fight. Probably because she wasn’t trying to attract him in any manner. “I read somewhere that talking about nightmares helps people to overcome them.” Actually, a shrink who’d once treated him for PTSD had told him that.
“Nightmares aren’t axiomatically detrimental,” she murmured. “They can be a way to deal with stress and fear. I don’t necessarily want to overcome mine.”
Was there an answer for that? He wasn’t sure. Even so, he watched her from his peripheral vision. In the gray light, the deep red hue of her cabernet-colored hair shone like some symbol of strength. While her hair was interesting, her eyes were fucking captivating. One blue, one green, with a star of green in the blue one. She was a torch of color on a dismal day. “Tell me about your dream anyway.”
